Planetary Defense Batteries

Thanks, now I can quote names at him. I toyed with the idea that firing
through an atmosphere increases the effective range by one band (short is
treated as medium etc.) but nothing was ever finalized. Alternatively the
atmosphere itself might be

the equivalent of level one screens (but not to ortillery). Now we have
missile magazines could we see planetary strike missiles? I can imagine a
cruiser caught out, her tubes loaded for a planetary strike facing an
unexpected defender.

I don't know about ships attacking planets, we never got that far. Line of
sight at least though. The closest we had were abstract rules for bombardment
to reduce a planets productivity.

The whole topic of planetary defenses came up during a discussion about the
next set of campaign rules, basically I would write something and he

would tear it apart (generally constructively and certainly without malice).
The problems came from our different perspectives, most fundamentally on the
speed of the war, mine was much slower than his.

As to a reason for them, I like artillery. The bigger the better. Seriously
though disabling the guns would be a commando mission to allow

the invasion to proceed (e.g. The Guns of Navarone). So one little Stargrunt
battle or two could decide a planets fate.

Ortillery is much better at leveling cities, and is not radioactive either. I
also assume that the defense batteries might be huge (class 5s

anyone?) after all you can feed them with a continental power grid (until that
gets shot to pieces).

I also like the idea of big gun platforms in orbit, again mounting huge
cannon.

Fighters and missiles are definitely better based in orbit, I would rule

that they lose a turn of endurance just climbing out of the gravity well.
Unless we take a lesson from 2300 and mount our fighters with disposable

boosters (German Udet class I think). For FT 2 missiles we costed the boosters
at one mass and five points I think.